Can someone explain this?
I just played against a silver ranked in Standard who completely flooded the board on turn 5. There are two instances where I believe he played more cards than his mana allowed, so if someone could explain to me what happened, I would appreciate it.
First instance is when he played Outcaster Trailblazer for 1 mana (because of his two Temur Battlecrier, which is fine) followed by a Devastating Onslaught that produced four copies of his Outcaster Trailblazer. He used one land to cast OT, and had two lands untapped. At that point, the two TB were reducing the mana costs of his spells by 3 (2x TB + 1x OT), which means that Devastating Onslaught could only produce two tokens of a creature (2 lands + 3 from the reduce mana cost = 5 mana, or (2)(2)(R) ). Yet he produced four tokens of his OT, as if the mana reduction applied to each X in the mana cost. As far as I know, a mana cost reduction applies for the total mana cost of a spell, not for each X in the spell's mana cost. Am I wrong? Or is this a bug?
Second instance is that every spell he cast after OT produced a red mana. He got 4 extra red mana to spend after his four OT tokens entered, and then he cast two more creatures. I know you can't see the cards under DO, but I can promise you there was nothing that could produce extra mana upon casting spells. Anyway, the first four red mana were produced upon casting DO, and as you can see with what he had on board prior to DO, nothing could produce extra mana. Even the Llanowear Elves were untapped, since he attacked with it.
If you would comment only to help me understand what happened (and not diss me for not knowing everything about the rules and mechanics), I would appreciate.
Posted Sep 2, 2025, 3:30 PM UTC